In a gray and hollow place, the ashes of our dream
by Lizardbeth J
Summary: The promise of Earth is a lie, and Sam realizes his sacrifices meant nothing. Revelations tag.


Takes place immediately after "Revelations". So yes, there are:

'REVELATIONS' SPOILERS.

* * *

**In a gray and hollow place, the ashes of our dreams**

by Lizardbeth

The wind whistled through the blocks of stone and empty windows in the partial wall, and across the sand. Sam concentrated on the feeling of the chill fingers of the wind lifting his hair and slipping under the collar of his jacket. If he closed his eyes and felt only the wind, he could imagine he was back on Caprica, at Vasu Lake in the winter, before any of this had happened.

"Hey. You coming?" Helo's voice penetrated the numbness and Sam blinked.

Sam glanced around to see Helo, with Sharon close beside him. "What?"

"We're going back up to _Galactica _for the night," Sharon explained.

"No." He took a step back, rejecting that idea in reflex.

Helo frowned and his expression turned a little wary. "You going to the base ship?"

The wariness hurt and Sam knew he was going to see nothing else. If even Karl doubted him… That knot in his chest hardened a little more. "No. I'm not going anywhere."

"There's nothing here," Helo objected.

"Yeah, I noticed, thanks." He turned his head away, gaze falling on a column and twisted metal in the sand, and his voice barely got through his throat, bitter and biting. "It's apparently my home, or didn't you hear?"

"You didn't know," Sharon murmured. "Sam, none of us knew."

He laughed once, a humorless gasp, and shook his head. "You think that helps? It makes everything worse. At least if I'd been playing everybody all along, I'd know what the frak was going on. But I don't know shit. I thought - " he laughed again, because frak, he'd thought a lot of things, and it turned out every single one of them had turned out either wrong or a lie. "The only thing that made all this bearable was hoping it might turn out _good_. That we could bring the fleet to a place we could all start over. But instead, we get this." He moved his arm gesturing to the ruins. "Welcome to Earth. Aren't you glad your precious Final Five brought you here? Was it worth it?" he raised his voice and sneered at D'Anna, though she was probably too far to hear him. Then he let out a harsh breath. No words of his were going to make her feel more of a fool than the ruins all around them did.

He folded his arms. "So frak it. I don't want to be on a Cylon ship again. But I am a Cylon and so I've got no place on _Galactica_ either."

Treacherously his mind turned to what he might have had, and he pushed it away. His answer of "I don't know" hadn't been good enough, and he hadn't had another to give. There was nothing for him on _Galactica_ anymore.

He caught Sharon's twitch as if she wanted to object and snorted. "Your 'more human that human' trick won't work for me. It's not like I blame them for hating what I am, when I've spent four years doing it too. But I don't want to sit there and wait for Seelix or Roslin or someone to shove me out an airlock or put a bullet in my head, either. So I'm staying."

His gaze settled briefly on the fallen ribs of the dome of the old temple, crumpled on the ground like a giant spider's corpse. "I think I'll check out the rest of my house. I got it cheap - even though it's got a great view of the water." He chuckled at his joke, with real amusement this time, feeling oddly free now that the decision was made. Having nothing was liberating. He should've chucked it all, a long time ago.

"See you." He walked away.

"Sam!" Helo called after him, but Sam ignored him.

"Let him go," he heard Sharon say.

Yeah, let him go. He'd done what he was programmed to do; too bad the code had gotten all screwy. He remembered D'Anna - the one in the garage -- telling the other Sharon she was just a broken machine. Funny that he'd been the most frakked up toaster of them all down there and not one of them had known it at the time.

He passed Tyrol heading the other way. "Raptors're that way." Galen pointed, but when their eyes met, he smiled faintly as if he knew what Sam was doing.

"I know. Take care of Nicky, Galen."

Speaking of toasters who'd been in the garage, next he came to Caprica with Tigh, ushering him along. She met Sam's glance and tentatively smiled, not letting go of Tigh's arm.

Tigh stirred from his own dark place. "Anders, what are you doing? Get back to the ship."

Sam shook his head. "I'm going to stay and look around some more."

"It's going to get cold tonight," Caprica reminded him. "We'll leave some gear at the landing site for you." He was grateful she didn't try to talk him out of it. But there was understanding and pity in her eyes, and he remembered that she had been friends with the first Sharon, who'd also been a sleeper. Her free hand squeezed his arm as she passed, and he briefly envied Saul for her love and care, but then he was past them.

The Cylon contingent was heading back too. The Eight brightened, seeing him come toward them, but then her face fell as he went past with only a nod. Tory was with her, and he didn't even look her way.

Then they were all behind him and he scrambled over the broken masonry, heading toward the bridge. He had reached the shadow of the support tower when he heard the roar of the engines, and he turned to watch them head into the sky. The sound trailed behind them, but faded away. All he could hear then was the wind and the fainter sound of the waves. With jolting abruptness, he realized he was the only person nearby. Perhaps the only living thing on the planet.

_Living_. Now there was a good joke.

His foot slipped on the damp stone, and in catching himself, he cut his palm on one of the sharp edges. For a long time, he stared entranced at the bright red blood that dripped onto the burnt rock where it mixed with the soot and turned inky black like the blood of some alien creature.

It hurt when he had to use the hand to climb the tower, but he ignored the throbbing, wiping the blood on the smooth fabric of his flight suit to keep his hand dry. Halfway up the tower, the concrete broke away under his grip as if it was rotted wood, and he nearly fell, hand and legs straining to hold himself up while he grabbed frantically for another hand hold. After that moment of panic passed, he climbed more carefully. He got a knee on the road bed, enough to haul the rest of him up there. He rose slowly, listening for ominous creaking or shifting under his feet, but the part he stood on seemed solid.

The wind was sharper and icier up here, cutting right through his jacket even after he zipped it closed. But the view was worth it up so high. He had a much better idea of what the city had looked like on this side, and the wrecks on the other side of the water were more distinct. He looked out toward the ocean, where gray clouds met gray water and white surf.

He walked slowly toward the end of the bridge above the water. It would be kind of funny if this bit of the bridge had managed to survive a nuclear war only to tumble down when he walked on it. But despite cracks and exposed rebar, all coated with a fur of rust and salt, it seemed steady.

Out closer to the end, where great chunks had fallen away leaving only the rusted steel girders, he decided he'd gone far enough and sat down cross-legged to look toward the fallen city across the water.

He tried to imagine what it had looked like - mentally drawing in the other part of the bridge stretching all the way across, high towers, city lights… but the image returned stubbornly to this view before him, gray and bleak. Even after the attacks, Caprica had never been as lifeless and horrible as this.

Eventually he gave up and watched the waves down below and the clouds, wondering if there were birds, but he didn't see any.

Something touched his hand and he froze, looking down to see a small iridescent beetle crawling across the back of his hand. No bigger than his littlest fingernail, it was nonetheless the first animal he'd seen.

He lifted his hand to watch as it picked its way across his skin, apparently not noticing that it wasn't on the concrete anymore. Then, when it was about to fall off, he set it down and watched it head off and disappear into a small crack.

The cold and hard surface beneath him was starting to feel uncomfortable, and his back ached, but he didn't feel like moving yet.

"_The Five who come from the home of the Thirteenth." _ He turned the words over and over in his mind, until they seemed as if they were in some other language. What did it matter really? He was caught just like that beetle, on the hand of something much larger than himself, at its mercy for whether he'd be let go or squished against the rocks.

Pulling up his knees, he rested his forearms on them, content to feel the cold wind against his face and breathe in the air.

A sudden voice behind him broke into his solitude: "What the frak are you doing, Sam?"

He whirled around, startled by the sound, pushing with his feet to look. He saw Kara, with Leoben trailing her. Of course.

His mouth stretched wide in a sudden grin, at odds with the stillness that filled his chest. "Hey, Leoben's here too. It must be the special destiny band reunion tour. I think we should talk to our booking manager, because this pit sucks." He chuckled, amused by his own wit, even though Kara and Leoben didn't crack a smile.

Her footsteps paused for a moment and her gaze set on him for a moment, frowning at his humor, before she started to pick her way nearer.

"Why didn't you go back with the others?" she asked, ignoring his joke.

"Back with 'my people'?" he asked, sarcastically, glancing from her to Leoben. "I'm not going to make it that easy. People can hate me for being a Cylon, but I'm not _with_ them."

She looked tired and a bit impatient, rephrasing, "I meant G_alactica_."

He shrugged. "Why should I? I belong here. I heard the hybrid too, you know. This is where I'm from." He waved a hand, across the horizon, and snickered. "Their taste is sort of questionable, don't you think? The planetary destruction motif is a little overdone. I'll definitely have to redecorate."

She listened to him, looking appalled. "Sam…"

He ran over whatever else she might say, not wanting to hear it. "More color would liven it up, too. As much as you can liven up a place where only beetles survived."

Leoben completely ignored the levity and sat on his heels at Sam's left side. "We don't know what the Hybrid meant. Her words are riddles and the obvious interpretation might not be correct."

"That'd be very nice to believe that," Sam said, condescending and sharp, "but I don't. I heard the frakking signal that pointed the way to this hell."

He turned back to face the broken skyline and added, more thoughtfully, "I thought maybe if I looked long enough, I'd remember. I'd get a flash and it would all come back, and I could see it as it used to be."

"You didn't," Leoben said, and it wasn't a question.

"No," Sam answered. "I don't remember anything. I try to picture it - the bridge, the towers. The city lights. Trees. Flowers. People. Dogs. Children," his voice caught and he stopped. His eyes felt suddenly hot, and he forced himself to stare at the ruins, as if he could will them to reshape themselves as they'd been. He had to swallow to find his voice again. "But they're all dead. There's no one left. No one --" He inhaled an unsteady breath that seemed to splinter in his throat. "No one to ask why? _Why did you do this to me_?"

His voice spiraled out uncontrollably, following the rage ripping free from his chest. His fingers dug into his palms, sharp pains that were nothing, and he shook, trying to pull it back in. Frak, he hadn't meant to let that out.

Neither of the others broke the silence in the wake of his shout, watching him like the family dog had suddenly gone rabid.

"What, Leoben? No pithy saying for the occasion?" he mocked savagely. "How's that faith looking right now? This isn't exactly the promised land,"

"No," Leoben answered. "It isn't the eden we believed it would be."

Sam glanced at his face, and saw how sad he looked. And he felt a bit of glee poking at the disappointment. "Finding out that everything you believe is a big fat lie is great fun, isn't it? I bet the Cylon God is laughing his ass off about what fools we are. Because it is pretty frakking funny after all."

He relaxed his hands to brush the concrete with his fingertips on either side. The texture was rough and pitted.

Kara knelt down to his right, not quite touching but near enough her presence blocked some of the wind. "Leoben and I were talking, and --Sam, you're bleeding." She seized his wrist in both of her hands and lifted his hand to look.

He yanked loose, the violence of the motion knocking him into Leoben on the other side. When had he gotten so close? "Leave it. It's nothing."

"Dumbass," she muttered, but didn't try again. "We decided we're going to go to the hybrid again. See if she can tell us more."

"Have fun."

"Sam, this is a chance maybe for you to get answers. She didn't actually interact with you - maybe she can tell you --"

He cut her off. "I'm not going on the Cylon ship again. I don't want any part of it. Don't you get it? I don't want any of this." He scrubbed his other hand through his hair and let the words out, each precise and edged like a knife, all the little blades that cut him where no one could see. "I'm sick of prophecies and cryptic bullshit and running around going nowhere. I'm tired of being a puppet of something I don't know and won't give me answers. I'm tired of the hate and the lies and killing for nothing. I'm tired of fighting, and questioning everything I do and wondering what's me and what's not. If there even is a me. I'm just… " His words abruptly dried up on a need to take a breath, and when he inhaled, he shut his eyes, finishing in a weary murmur. "I'm just tired."

And Gods, it was so true. Without the surge of anger filling him, he felt hollow down to his bones, and the thought of doing anything was too much.

He felt a hand on his leg, sliding gently up to his knee, and Leoben said, "Earth isn't what we hoped for, but you shouldn't lose sight of what we've gained. Humans and Cylons are working together, not fighting. And that's because of you. You brought us together."

Sam considered the words for a moment but they didn't mean anything. "It won't last."

"That's why we're going to need your help -- Humans and Cylons. We need to learn how to live in peace. You're one of the few who can teach that."

He laughed hollowly. "Like I know the first damn thing about living in peace with Cylons."

Leoben was silent a moment, his hand still on Sam's knee. Before he spoke, he framed his words carefully, "You wouldn't be overcome by such darkness and pain if you didn't feel strongly. You seek to protect others, and it hurts you when they hurt. Your heart is both Human and Cylon and strong enough to hold all of your people, if you let them inside."

He shook his head - he heard Leoben's words and he knew they were true, but he couldn't grasp them himself. "I -- I can't. Not all alone."

On the other side, Kara moved closer, pressing herself against his arm. He jerked a little and opened his eyes. "You're not alone, Sam."

He turned his head toward her and asked pointedly, "Aren't I?"

For the space of a breath, she held his eyes, and then she answered, "No, you're not." Then she smiled at him, her lower lip trembling a little. "I didn't run from pod to pod to save _Tigh_, you moron."

He held himself from getting sucked in. "You told me -- "

"Gods, don't you know better than listen to me?" she demanded, half laughing. "I was … I was angry. Confused. I said things I didn't mean."

He hated that the words he wanted to hear didn't even sound real. The words she'd thrown in his face had sounded more like the truth - maybe because he'd been waiting for them. "You said you didn't marry a Cylon."

"I married Sam Anders," she said, raising her chin and meeting his eyes without fear, "who happens to be a Cylon. It doesn't matter to me."

She said it so boldly, as if she'd made a decision, but he remembered other words, too: words she'd used to hurt, words to turn his love and faith against him. Each word was nothing in itself - Kara being Kara - but the weight of them had broken what he'd been barely holding together, even before they'd found out Earth was a wasteland.

"I want to believe you… " he murmured and turned his head away to look at the city. "But I believed you before. When you said you didn't trust me, and you couldn't ever love a Cylon who'd tricked you."

She made a small sound and rubbed her head against his shoulder. "I did this," she whispered. "I'm sorry, Sam. I kept pushing, and pushing... and I kept thinking you'd fight me, that you'd argue back but you didn't. You just stood there with those eyes like you were already dead. I didn't know what to say…" she trailed off, sounding helpless. One of her hands grabbed his forearm and held tight. "I didn't mean it. I swear I didn't."

"You didn't say anything I didn't already think."

"Well, then you're wrong," she retorted. "We're _all_ pawns in this, Sam. Me and my crazy visions and my shiny Viper, just as much as you. Frak, I don't know what I am either. Don't you see? We're the same." She turned into him, holding out her arm to show her wing. "I still have this. I'm still me. You still have yours. We're here; we're alive. Somehow in spite of everything, we're alive and we're together. That's what matters."

On the other side, over Sam's back, Leoben advised, with a note of impatience in his voice, "Kara, tell him. He needs to hear _all_ the words. This isn't the time to hold anything back."

Sam turned his head to look at her again, curious but wary of what Leoben meant. She smiled at him, but her eyes glimmered and her lips trembled. "Gods, look at you," she murmured and her fingers touched his face. Then she inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly, but resolution squared her shoulders. Her smile widened, and her eyes brightened, until her whole face lit up and it felt like the sun was emerging. And she declared in a soft, but intent voice, never taking her hand from his face, "I married you, Samuel T. Anders, because I love you. I have loved you from the first moment you held a gun in my face, and I have never, ever stopped loving you, even when I was being a frakked up moron. I love you as a human, I love you as a Cylon, and I'm sorry I ever made you doubt that."

"Kara?" he asked, barely able to find his voice, as the light of her eyes seemed to reach down into the hollow part of his soul and chase out the shadows.

"It's me," she confirmed, still smiling, even as she blinked, eyelashes dark and wet.

He framed her face in both hands, looking into her eyes and seeing only love there -- no revulsion, no distaste, no fear, nothing he feared to find.

She swallowed hard and whispered, "Don't leave me." She leaned into him, and their lips touched and joined. Her mouth pulled at his, insistent as if intent to prove to him that she meant it, and her hands curled through his hair and neck to hold him tightly.

"Never," he promised in one breath's separation away from her mouth before reclaiming it.

The wind was cold, but he didn't feel it, too intent on remembering her lips and kissing her everywhere he could reach, drawing her warmth and light into him again.

Then it hit him. That insistent sound - the drone -- crawled into his head again, and he had to pull back.

"Oh frak," he muttered. "Do you hear that?" he asked.

Her blank face was answer enough. "Hear what?"

"The music," he explained through clenched teeth. Gods, it was strong - it felt like a spike in his brain. Or a hook, and someone was reeling him in. He sagged into her, holding his hands to his head trying to block it from his ears. But he wasn't actually _hearing_ it at all, and it didn't stop.

"Sam?" Kara asked, clutching him as he turned to try to get a sense of direction.

"Sorry. I have to go." He lurched away from her hands, but couldn't find his feet.

"Help him up," Leoben ordered her sharply and his hands clasped Sam's wrists and pulled him to his feet, as Kara shoved.

Getting up seemed to help, he turned, frowning. "This way," he started toward the source of the signal, and was almost immediately arrested by strong arms around his chest, pulling him back.

"Not that way. You'll have to go around," Leoben said, and Sam blinked, realizing he had been heading for the edge of the bridge above the water.

Letting out a gasping breath, he turned toward the end of the bridge and the support. Because he wasn't going quite the right way, it buzzed in his brain, distracting. At the tower he pressed his fists into the sides of his head, trying to make it stop. "Oh gods. Frak. It's so strong…"

Kara held his arm, and said worriedly. "Sam?"

"I hate this. But I have to follow it." He yanked free of her and started to climb down with single-minded purpose. Besides the insistence of the signal itself, he wanted to know what was at the end. He'd thought he was done with these. He'd _hoped _he was done.

Apparently not.

At the foot of the tower, Leoben pulled her out of his way, so he could retrace his steps through the rubble. "Let him lead."

A few times he had to reorient. It was easy to lose it, scrambling over the piles of rubble. So he had to triangulate the strength before heading off again.

After another back-track, she asked, "Is this what I was like on _Demetrius? _This annoying?"

"He won't say so," Leoben answered, sounding amused somewhere behind Sam, "but yes."

"Shut up," Sam told them. "I have to listen."

He saw Kara rolling her eyes, but she quieted and followed him, with a gentle pat on the middle of his back. Distantly he was grateful, even if he couldn't tell her so while the sound held him in its thrall again.

He was not surprised to find himself back in the temple ruin. The signal was there, all around, a constant whine right between his ears. "I still hear it, but I can't tell," he said, pacing a circle and then turning in a slow arc and raising his eyes to the empty windows. "It's gotta be coming from here. Someplace. But there's nothing different…" But his gaze fell on the ribs of the dome again and the central nub where the ribs came together, and the dark space beneath them. When he blinked, that space seemed to glow with warm yellow light behind his eyelids.

He approached it slowly, climbing the three steps and sinking to both knees beneath the arch of one of the fallen ribs.

"Sam, be careful," Kara warned in alarm.

His fingertips touched the cold stone and he closed his eyes. The sound changed - its distant discordant hum transformed and became a song, high and aching and familiar… voices raised in joy and prayer.

When he opened his eyes and turned around, he saw Kara and Leoben standing in the ruins.

But he also saw the high dome with its painted ceiling of a sunrise soaring overhead. Golden brilliant light streamed in through the high windows at the base of the dome, glimmering on the polished stone floor and murals on the walls, between windows of stained glass with images of flowers and the sun.

He met Kara's eyes and smiled. "I remember. I was here." He looked around, seeing the temple as it had been - a place of light and peace. "I can see it. It was so beautiful."

Taking Kara's hand in his, they walked slowly up the beach, through the aisle of the temple, out the gate, and into the gardens-that-were. They turned to face the water and the city beyond it, and it seemed right that Leoben should be standing on his other side. The sun hung just above the horizon, behind the cloud bank but casting the first color across the sky and the water, in shades of gentle peach and rose.

Sam described to them what he saw: the glass and steel towers shining in the sunlight, all curves and spires and balconies filled with green plants... the bridge standing ancient sentinel above the water…. The millions of people who had once lived all around them, at school and work and play.

His people, before the end had come.

The vision or memory faded away, and he saw the shattered remains again. The grief was a sharper knife in him, for having seen what was lost. But that grief also brought an edge of clarity that cut through the pain and confusion.

"I understand now. That's why we're here," he whispered. "Over and over again, people build and then we tear it down. Your people, my people, it doesn't matter - people always destroy themselves. But now we're gathered here together and we're all the last of our kind. We have to do it right, this time. We have to, or nothing will be left but this."

"We will," Kara said. She leaned into him, and her hand was warm and human in his. And on his other side, Leoben took his other hand. His skin was cooler, Cylon.

"We will," Leoben vowed.

Sam lifted his face into cold wind and kept his eyes open to watch the sun set. The ruins were unchanged before him, but Sam faced them unflinching. He knew the path now, and they would walk it, together.

_the end._


End file.
